Apple’s hardware today is amazing — it has never been better. But
the software quality has taken such a nosedive in the last few
years that I’m deeply concerned for its future. I’m typing this on
a computer whose existence I didn’t even think would be possible
yet, but it runs an OS riddled with embarrassing bugs and
fundamental regressions. Just a few years ago, we would have
relentlessly made fun of Windows users for these same bugs on
their inferior OS, but we can’t talk anymore.

“It just works” was never completely true, but I don’t think the
list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been longer. We now need
to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme
skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT
departments employ.

It’s a very astute piece, well-worth the attention it’s getting. But regarding the headline — if they’ve “lost the functional high ground”, who did they lose it to? I say no one. Marco’s cited example of Geoff Wozniak switching back to desktop Linux is an outlier, not part of any significant trend.

The second paragraph I quote above is more to the point. Apple hasn’t (yet) lost any ground in the market, but they’ve created an opportunity for that to happen, because they’ve squandered a lot of trust with their users. It’s not that Apple has lost the “it just works” crown to a competitor, but rather that they’ve seeded a perception that Apple’s stuff doesn’t work, either.